


Rise of Skywalker - Alternate Ending

by Oryanna7



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:41:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24774784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oryanna7/pseuds/Oryanna7
Summary: What if Ben lived?  A short summary of my imagined alternate ending of Rise of Skywalker.





	Rise of Skywalker - Alternate Ending

With bloodied hands, Ben used all the effort he had left in him to pull himself up the jagged cliff. He struggled to breathe. The piercing feeling still lingered all over his body from the life-draining force lightning that nearly killed him. It was like thousands of sharpened needles poking every inch of his skin over and over.

He must have been unconscious when he fell into this pit as he didn’t remember falling. His body certainly remembers - it ached all over and was covered in bloody abrasions, complete with a headache so bad it was affecting his vision. One of his ribs was making a jarring popping noise with every extension of his arm. But he climbed on.

The eerie stillness above left a sinking feeling in his heart. He could no longer feel Rey, but neither could he sense or hear Palpatine. He couldn’t hear the crowd of worshippers that were gathered or gunship fire from above. Just echoes of rocks falling and settling. He could feel life, or maybe just a positive force, somewhere not too far away but he was still so weak from his fight with Palpatine that the feelings were muddled and hard to sort.

With all the strength he could muster, he climbed. It felt like years to climb up the stupid wall. And when he finally reached the top, his heart nearly stopped.

The fighting was over. The Sith throne was crushed below rubble and stone. The worshippers too. The only thing left besides rock was the body of a person wearing white, illuminated by the only shaft of starlight in the entire cavern, lying just in front of him.

Ben pulled himself onto the surface of the ruined Sith temple. His vision was blurred, but he didn’t move his eyes from the body. That couldn’t be Rey. She couldn’t have been defeated. She was too strong for that.

He stumbled trying to run. Rocks were still falling from the collapsing ceiling and rolling across the floor. The entire temple was still unstable.

Something snapped near his ribcage as he jumped down a ledge and the pain sent him sprawling to the ground. He worked through the pain. He had to get to Rey.

But the closer he got to her, the more he was sure of something he wasn’t ready to accept.

Ben dropped beside her and grabbed her body. He pulled her in close. No heartbeat. She wasn’t breathing. Her face was already blanched and cold. There wasn’t an ounce of life force radiating from her. 

She was dead. 

It wasn’t meant to be him that lives. She resisted every temptation of power offered to her by the Dark Side. She was the hero the galaxy needed. Tears stung his eyes as he cradled her close to him. She is supposed to be alive. 

He took a deep breath. His life meant nothing without her. His next move was an easy decision for him. 

He set Rey’s body back some. Then closed his eyes and focused. 

Ben placed his hand onto the bottom of Rey’s ribcage. The same place she set her hand when she openly gave her life for him. He breathed in with intention and out with determination. He saw his life in his mind. Swirls of colors and memories. Then they became clouded. It was like Ben was drowning, suffocating. He saw visions of Rey, how she entered his life and parted the darkness that surrounded him. She cut the puppet master’s strings that controlled him. In return, he envisioned himself lying down for Rey to rise up. He was going to give up his life for hers.

But, he couldn’t.

He opened his eyes. Rey was still dead. He shook his head. No, this isn’t right.

Ben closed his eyes and tried again. And again. 

How did she do it? Rey so easily gave up her life for him. It was effortless for her. How was she able to perform such a powerful feat without seeing another Jedi do it? Maybe Ben’s life was so intertwined with the Dark Side that he couldn’t escape it like he thought he had? Maybe that was Rey’s gift. Maybe she was just that strong.

Ben clutched Rey tightly. He wasn’t ready to let her go. They didn’t have enough time together.

The realization hit him and the heartbreak that followed hurt worse than all the pain he had ever endured combined. He put his forehead on hers. Ben’s eyes filled with tears. He stayed there with her, trying over and over to bring her back.

Whether it was minutes, hours, or days, Ben wasn’t sure, but the collapsed temple eventually pushed Ben out. As the fallen First Order ships that were circling the planet continued to crash into the planet’s surface, the ground continued to shake and resettle. Some pieces were making landfall very close to the temple. Ben couldn’t leave Rey here to be buried in the same ruins as Palpatine. She needed to be brought somewhere good and pure, like her.

Ben reached his hand out into the darkness. He summoned Luke’s lightsaber, then lashed it to his belt. He reached out a second time for Leia’s. It struggled, but also made its way into his hand.

Before putting it too on his belt, he looked at it for a moment. His mother was a Jedi this entire time. Ben always knew this in his heart, but in his arrogance he wrote off his mother’s kindness, sacrifice, and strength. If he just reached out to her, she would have understood his struggle with the darkness that consumed him. She might have helped him. Both of his parents could.

He tucked the lightsaber next to his uncle’s on his belt. No life signaled from either one. They didn’t feel like the weapons of force users, but ordinary tools. A lightsaber with no owner was just a pile of scrap metal.

Ben gently picked up Rey while wincing from the pain in his ribcage and left the cave.

\---

Ben knew this abandoned farm. It was where his uncle was hidden from Darth Vader for many years. It was the most ordinary and unremarkable planet in the entire galaxy. Somehow though, it was always tied to the fate of the Jedi.

The house was filled with dirt and a fine layer of sand coated everything inside. It seems the locals left almost everything intact, even cups were out on the tables where they were last used. Ben walked from room to room looking for something that could help him.

There wasn’t much on Tatooine that was burnable, but Ben found some old sheets and blankets that would work. He brought the supplies out of the house and down a few paces away where he set up an old metal crate to work as a pyre for Rey. 

He placed the twin lightsaber’s in Rey’s hands then wrapped her body in the sheets and laid her softly on top of the folded pile of blankets on top of the metal crate. 

Without words or ceremony, he ignited the blankets surrounding Rey’s body using some fuel and other pieces he ripped out from his ship.

He stood in somber silence as the flames carried her away. He stood there unblinking, staring into the flame as the smoke traveled high into the sky. The ship fuel made the pyre burn bright and for quite some time. Ben was at a loss. Grief and sadness consumed him and made him numb.

The fire eventually started to die down just as the twin suns started setting on the horizon.

Before it could completely dissipate and reveal what was left, Ben got to his knees and put his hands to the ground. He used the force to part the sand and gently send Rey’s remains and the lightsabers deep into the ground. 

An elderly human woman with a large pack animal made it to the farm just as Ben was finished moving Rey into the ground. The old woman stopped a few paces away from him. The smoke from the funeral must have attracted the attention of this local. 

“There’s been no one for so long,” she muttered, curious of the strange man knelt down in the sand.

Ben tore his eyes from the spot that the pyre just was and looked to the old woman. His eyes were bloodshot and dry, his hair was matted to his head, blood still caked his ripped and tattered clothing. He remained silent.

“Who are you?” the old woman was set aback by his grizzled appearance. She wondered if he was a ghost, haunted from the tragedies that happened in this house. Or graverobbers that came to strip the house of anything that was left.

Ben looked back to the spot in the sand, he could still hear Rey’s voice calling him. The last name he admitted to was Kylo Ren. A name of power and fear. But Kylo Ren was dead. Rey purged him from Ben’s mind forever. He looked back to the old woman.

“Ben,” he answered, his voice was hoarse.

The old woman searched her memories of the farm and the people that lived there. She didn’t recognize that name. “Ben who?”

‘Solo,’ he wanted to answer. But was Ben Solo any better than Kylo Ren? Ben Solo failed Luke, murdered his father, let his mother be a pawn in meaningless war, and wasn’t there to help Rey when she finished the ultimate evil that tormented his mind for years. Ben Solo could have saved them all, but he didn’t. Ben Solo was a failure too.

Ben looked out into the desert. The scorching heat waves warped the horizon line, bending it around like ripples in a pond. In the middle of the rolling heat, a small beam of bright white light glinted in the distance.

He squinted his eyes to focus on that spot. It grew brighter and more clear the longer he looked at it. It revealed the ethereal glow of two people standing out in the desert heat. 

Luke and Leia Skywalker stood side by side, surrounded by a serene light. They were together and at peace. They were smiling at him.

Ben softly gasped for air. If he wasn’t so dehydrated, he would have cried a thousand tears in that moment. They hadn’t given up on him.

“Skywalker,” the emotional knot in Ben’s throat nearly caused him to choke. 

The old woman instantly remembered that name. Without another word spoken by either of them, the woman jumped to his aid. She moved him into the house, forced him to drink some water she had packed on her Jerba, and helped clean his wounds up as best she could. Ben passed out from exhaustion on a cot before she even left.

\----  
Ben didn’t sleep a single night in peace. He often woke up in cold sweats, violently lashing around as his mind tried to run away from his past life. The voices of Snoke, Vader, and all the other tormentors that lived inside his head were finally gone, but the screams of trillions of people he killed haunted him every night. Not just those that he killed in combat, not just his mother and father, but the innocent lives he slaughtered to get what he wanted. He could hear every man, woman, child, and beast crying inside his head.

This was his punishment. He would live the rest of his days nearly starving, severely dehydrated, and tormented by a new group of voices every night.

It had been many months since he last saw anyone. He was grounded after gutting his ship to fix all the vapor collectors and household appliances. He never needed to go to town or even to speak to anyone else. No one ever bothered him.

Luke and Leia never returned either. If they were ever there in the first place. He called out for their help many times, but they never showed up. Maybe he didn’t deserve their help.

One bright day, one of his vapor collectors was acting up and Ben was out attempting to fix it. 

By this point, his hair was long, worn with the top half in a bun and the bottom half down around his shoulders. He rubbed his scruffy patch of facial hair, thinking about how he was supposed to fix this dilapidated piece of junk. The First Order always had professionals whenever something needed repair and used proprietary engines so he never learned about fixing mechanical problems of normal objects.

He sat there for a long moment, studying the cables, pipes, and switches. The problem had to be the outgoing pipe was clogged with sand. That was a common problem he discovered with these old machines. Just as Ben reached down to open the grate of the exhaust pipe, he heard a voice close to his ear.

“The casing around the power cable is cracked, right there,” it said in a matter of fact tone. It sounded just like Rey! Ben’s eyes grew wide and he whipped his head around to look for the source of the voice. No one was around him.

Ben turned around and around, looking across the endless desert. 

No one was out there. Just sand and rocks.

He looked back to the machine. He must have imagined it. Wishful thinking.

Ben chuckled to himself, his heart feeling a fleeting moment of joy. It was nice to hear her voice again. The panel with all the wires was open and three of them were sticking straight out. One of them was bound to be the main power cable. Ben grabbed the blue wire.

“No,” Rey’s voice whispered again, with the harshness of a master teacher that was speaking to a student that never listens, “The power cable.”

Ben moved his hand to a green wire.

“No, the one I’m pointing to,” the voice sassed. Ben hovered his hand over the last wire, smiling brightly. She was such a know-it-all. He hoped with all of his heart that she would be standing right next to him. He looked beside him and still there was no one. 

He sighed deeply. He took one more hopeful look over his shoulder. He longed to see her face one more time. 

But, a tiny silhouette appeared far in the distance. Standing on the horizon.

Ben couldn’t believe his eyes. It was a person walking towards him. He gave himself a look over, attempting to straighten out his clothes and look presentable. It was a feeble attempt, nothing would make him look less haggard. 

The blurred figure quickly got clearer as it moved across the wasteland. It was actually two people, a grown human male and a smaller person. Ben sighed. Definitely not Rey.

As the two got even closer, Ben recognized the man. It was that defector friend of Rey’s. Ben searched his memory for his name. Finn.

Finn was walking towards him with several books stacked in his hands and a female Twi’lek child prancing beside him. Finn’s hair was also long, but he looked healthy. He was still dressed like a Resistance guerilla soldier. He wore a very apparent uneasiness on his face.

The two visitors stopped in front of Ben, taking in his very not-Kylo-Ren-like appearance. Neither spoke for a long moment. The only noise was the endless wind blowing across the sand.

The child had light blue skin and wore an oversized button-up shirt as a dress, a small leather band cinching it at the waist, and a headband to hold her lekku back and away from her ears. She looked from Finn to Ben and back again several times.

“Rey left these behind,” Finn finally broke the silence. He lifted his hands, motioning to the books with a nod. Ben looked down to see several incredibly old Jedi tomes. Finn stepped closer to Ben and handed the pile to him, “Figured they should probably go to you.”

Ben took the stack of books and held them, still silent and wearing a blank expression. Did he come all the way to Tatooine to give Ben these books?

Finn stepped back and looked Ben up and down. He then turned to the little girl. Finn knelt down to be eye level with her and said, “This is the man I told you about. Why don’t you show him your trick?”

The girl smiled brightly. She turned to Ben and took one comically large step forward.

The little Twi’lek looked around, but couldn’t seem to find what she was looking for. She looked back to Finn nervously. Finn touched the ground lightly with one finger, then made a small circle in the sand.

The little girl brightened up and looked back to Ben with a large smile. She raised her hands in front of her, palms to the sky.

Ben still gazed at them with a blank expression. 

Suddenly, some sand traveled up between her hands and swirled in large circles over her palm. She giggled and dropped her hands. As she did, the sand also dropped to the ground.

She was using the Force.

Finn stood up from his knee, wiping the sand from his pants as he did.

“Rey only wanted redemption for you. So, do it for her,” Finn’s voice carried an air of warning. Ben could tell Finn didn’t trust him. But Rey did, and that was good enough for Finn. The two men stared at each other tensely for a few seconds. 

Ben looked at the books, then to the girl, then back to Finn. Finn was planning on leaving this girl with him because she could wield the Force.

“How did you find me?” Ben finally spoke. The girl’s head jolted back a bit when she heard Ben’s grizzled voice.

Finn looked away to somewhere in the distance. He pursed his lips a bit. “That’s the thing,” he began, “It wasn’t just Rey that I could sense. But all of them. All of you.” He looked Ben directly in the eyes, the connection between them was sharp and meaningful.

Finn could sense all of the Jedi when he focused. He could feel when they were in trouble or in pain. From the very beginning, when Kylo Ren joined the First Order, Finn could feel the tremendous power of the Dark Side plaguing Ben’s mind. He could see how much torment he was in. 

Ben recognized Finn’s prodigious gift. A gift only a Jedi could possess.

Ben wondered for a moment if that meant Finn always knew where he was and what his intentions were. Or if he could sense Palpatine this entire time… Ben’s jaw tightened at the very thought of it.

Ben must have been thinking in silence for a bit too long as Finn changed the subject. “Is she here?” Finn looked over to the exact spot in the endless desert where Rey was buried.

Ben nodded his head slowly.

“This is a good place for her. It’s safe,” Finn peeled his eyes from the desert to look down to the little girl that he brought with him. “And it’ll be safe for you too. I promise.”

The girl wrapped her arms around Finn and hugged him tight. Their connection was full of love and thankfulness. He straightened her headband and let his hands rest on her shoulders. The look in his eyes was the same one Ben saw in his father’s eyes when his parents left him with Master Luke for training. It was a mixture of sadness, pride, fear, and hope.

The girl was smiling brightly. She trusted Finn’s judgement with all of her heart. She stepped back from Finn, then turned and pranced over to Ben’s side.

“I’m trusting you to do the right thing here,” Finn said. Finn waved to the girl and she returned the wave enthusiastically. Finn turned and left in the same direction he came from.

Ben began to walk to the house with the books. The girl trotted along beside him.

**Author's Note:**

> The biggest issue I had with Rise of Skywalker is that they gave Finn a secret, made it a big deal, then never officially revealed the secret in the movie. Finn is one of my favorite characters in anything ever. He's basically Sailor Moon to me, winning the day with friendship and kindess. So, I imagined his secret was that he is, in fact, a Jedi, with specialized empath-like powers. It makes it interesting for me to think this and watch the movie again. All of his "Rey!"s seem a little deeper, like he knows what's happening but feels conflicted on whether or not to intervene with her struggle to stay on the Light Side. Maybe Leia was training him too, in a different way, and guided Finn to not help Rey connect with the other Jedi, that she needed to do that on her own. So many little theories! Also, I love Rey to pieces. She's an amazing character. But she should have died a hero and let Ben have an official redemption arc. A tortured soul makes for a better anti-hero anyway :P


End file.
